On one hand, Alain Vigneault has to be frustrated by the Canucks’ continued struggle to ice something resembling a competitive lineup. Thursday night, the club was so shorthanded they were forced to deploy Keith Ballard as a top-nine forward, and somehow they managed to lose another key component in that one after Alex Edler was suspended two games for colliding with Mike “I step in front of cars and sue the drivers” Smith.

But on the other hand, the shorthandedness of Vigneault’s club means they have no choice but to go into full-blown shutdown mode, and I think we all know that Alain Vigneault descends into hockey vampirism — sucking the life out of games in order to survive — with unbridled, abject glee. The Canucks were unyielding in their defensive posture in this one, scoring early, then nursing a 1-0 lead so completely that, after the game, they had to burp it. I sort of felt like a creep when I watched this game.

The Canucks are already having to get creative in order to ice a competitive lineup. Thursday night in Phoenix, they had defenceman Keith Ballard playing as a winger. On the third line. If that doesn’t say something about how incredibly shorthanded they are, I don’t know that does.

And now they’re going to be even more shorthanded. The Shanahammer has come down on Alexander Edler for his charge on Coyotes’ netminder Mike Smith and it’s come down absurdly, head-scratchingly, absolutely what-the-effingly hard: Edler will sit for two games. On the bright side, they have a third-line winger they can probably convert.

“It wasn’t necessarily pretty all the time. It wasn’t a Picasso, but it was effective and it got the job done.”

That’s what Cory Schneider said after the Canucks’ hard-fought 2-1 victory over the Phoenix Coyotes on Thursday. While I understand what he’s saying and it’s a pretty common phrase, I have to wonder how many Picassos Schneider has seen in his life. Picasso’s paintings may be brilliant masterpieces, but not too many of them can be appropriately described as “pretty.”

In fact, the surrealism of Keith Ballard playing forward, the usually sleepy Alex Edler running over Mike Smith, and Chris Tanev scoring a goal fits pretty well with Picasso’s surrealist period. Here are three examples of how the game between the Canucks and Coyotes totally was a Picasso.

Canuck fans are usually delighted when Alex Edler decides to play with an edge. The big Swede can be a punishing hitter when he overcomes his narcolepsy and chooses to assert himself — just ask Patrick Kane, Drew Doughty, or, as it happens, Mike Smith.

Of course, the Smith hit is different. While Edler is well within his rights to crush just about any member of the opposition that has the puck, especially behind the net in the “hitting zone”, the NHL rulebook is pretty explicit about goaltenders not being “fair game”. Thus, Edler’s huge collision with Smith from Thursday night’s 2-1 Vancouver win over the Phoenix Coyotes has earned him a phone hearing with Brendan Shanahan and the Shanavengers at the Department of Player Safety.

It’s possible that this could just be a friendly “hi, how are ya”. But it’s also possible that this could be a precursor to the Canucks’ second suspension of 2013. The Bible says faith comes by hearing. Does suspension as well?

By all accounts, this game should have been a gong show. David Booth joined Ryan Kesler on the Injured Reserve list, Zack Kassian and Steve Pinizzotto didn’t even fly to Phoenix, and Chris Higgins tweaked his back at the morning skate, turning the Canucks’ lineup into the hockey equivalent of Aziz Ansari’s boombox mixtape.

Like that mixtape, the Canucks’ third line seemed to be thrown together at random, with Andrew Ebbett centring Dale Weise and Keith Ballard. Andrew Gordon drew into the lineup for his first game as a Canuck on a fourth line with Maxim Lapierre and Tom Sestito. The haphazardly arranged lineup looked like a disaster on paper, but the Canucks knuckled down and played a simple, hard-working road game.

That isn’t to say it didn’t have its bizarre moments, as it certainly did. At times, this game resembled the Coyotes’ original, seemingly peyote-inspired, jerseys. I reached a higher plane of existence when I watched this game.

Spitballin’ (or Super Pass It To Bulis: All In, if you love adventurous acronymizing) is a feature that allows us to touch on a multitude of things really fast, because in the world of hockey, there are always lots of things to find and colour. Here are a few topics that deserve mention.

Much like Stella Payne, Jordan Schroeder had lost his groove, so the Canucks sent him down to Chicago to get it back. On Tuesday, he made a strong case for having rediscovered it.

Alain Vigneault faced a lot of criticism for his decision to pair Jordan Schroeder with Dale Weise and Tom Sestito in the games before Schroeder’s demotion to the minors, but much of it was misplaced. Sure, Schroeder is the most skilled player on that line, but that should be perfectly clear. To be a centre in the NHL, you have to be able to elevate your wingers rather than falling to their level, and Schroeder was unable to stand out on that fourth line during his first stint with the team.

Early in his second stint, however, he finally broke through, making Dale Weise look like the Daniel Sedin to his Henrik as the two combined for a highlight-reel goal that turned out to be the game-winner. It’s a great goal, and it only gets greater the more you watch it. How does a 2-on-4 during a line change turn into a down-low 1-on-0 for Dale Weise in a matter of seconds, especially against the St. Louis Blues, who are usually airtight defensively? Well. Let’s break it down.

It’s been awhile since we talked about the hockey team in Abbotsford, which makes sense, since they’re a Calgary Flames affiliate and this is a Vancouver Canucks blog. But if the Team 1040′s Tom Mayenknecht is correct, it won’t be a Flames affiliate for much longer. As has been rumoured for ages, the Canucks are in the process of working out a move that would allow them to set up shop in the Lower Mainland’s city in the country.

According to Mayenknecht, as part of a game of musical chairs, the Flames would move the Heat to Utica, leaving Abbotsford for the Canucks, who would then finalize a purchase for the Peoria Rivermen and quickly transform them into the Abbotsford Fraser Rivermen (or, you know, a better name). Meanwhile, the St. Louis Blues would align themselves with the independent Chicago Wolves.

You may have noticed that Chris Tanev is getting beat up in front of the net recently — Not by opposing players, but by the puck. It seems to be a nightly occurrence for Tanev to block a heavy shot, drop to the ice in pain, and then make his way to the dressing room, get attended to by Mike Burnstein, and come back to the game. It’s happened so often that I’ve taken to calling him Chris “Walk it Off” Tanev.

For instance, he took a Shea Weber slapshot to the knee that cracked his knee pad during the Canucks’ game against the Nashville Predators on March 14th. He went directly to the dressing room and I thought his night was done. That’s the same Shea Weber that shot a puck through the net during the Olympics. Instead, he walked it off and came straight back to the bench. He ended up not missing a shift.

Tuesday night against the St. Louis Blues, Tanev took a shot to the side of the head on Patrik Berglund’s goal and left the game. There was good reason to be concerned: a puck to the head can break a player’s jaw or orbital bone or even cause a concussion. But, after the game, reports came in that Tanev was fine.

Why does Tanev keep getting (temporarily) injured by shots? It’s because he seems to think that he’s a road hockey goalie. By all indications, he’s a pretty good one too.

For the fourth straight game, the Canucks struggled with their defensive play in the third period, surrendering two goals. That’s the bad news. But the good news is that, for the first time since Nashville, it didn’t affect the final score. Vancouver’s issues closing out games were relatively inconsequential by the time the third rolled around, thanks in large part to strong individual performances in the first and second.

In the first, it was Cory Schneider and only Cory Schneider, who was unbeatable, despite seeing more rubber than Tate Langdon in American Horror Story. In the second, it was Dale mother-flipping Weise. The Flying Dutchman stepped on the clutch and shifted into high gear Tuesday, scoring a highlight-reel goal that turned out to be the game-winner. That’s right: thanks to Weise, the Canucks won this game. And thanks to the innovations of Philo Farnsworth, I watched this game.

Under normal circumstances, I’d say it’s hard not to feel bad for David Booth, what with the terrible luck he’s faced as a Canuck. But as we’ve covered extensively on this website, people really dislike him, be it for his exorbitant contract, his outspoken faith, his affinity for hunting, his lack of production or all of the above. On Monday, when we suggested that the lack of news about Booth was an indication he might be out for the season with an ankle injury (which appears to be the case), one follower responded, “Karma!” as though Booth deserved a season-ending injury. That’s absurd to me, but I don’t think that follower was alone in his thinking.

Still, if you can put aside for a moment the intense dislike that orbits Booth like a small, somewhat unfair, slightly irrational moon, then it’s hard not to feel bad for him. After all, the winger has been plagued by rotten fortune since he was acquired last fall.

First there was the knee-on-knee collision with Colorado’s David Porter, for which Porter missed five games to suspension but Booth missed 18 with an MCL injury. In the 62 games he did play, Booth put up 16 goals for a 20-goal pace, a nice, round number that would have earned him much softer treatment from the Vancouver faithful had he hit it, but thanks to the injury, he didn’t, and hockey fans aren’t in the business of giving credit for projected scoring. The raw fact was that Booth earned $4.2 million for 16 goals. That wasn’t good enough.

His sophomore campaign has been plagued with even more injury trouble. After the lockout (during which Booth did little to ingratiate himself to Canuck fans, filling his timeline with evangelical platitudes and kill shots), Booth strained his groin in the team’s first practice. He missed 15 games.

Then, after returning for 12, Booth sprained his ankle Saturday versus the Detroit Red Wings. According to the Canucks, he’s now out “indefinitely”.

I’m not panicking yet. I’m far too level-headed to go off the deep end for a loss in which the Canucks soundly outplayed their opponent for the majority of the game, not even when that loss is their 8th in their last 11 games and puts the Canucks at the edge of the playoff picture in the Western Conference, not when there are still 20 games left to be played in the season. No, I’m not panicking.

But I will admit to being concerned. I’m concerned because I know it’s possible, however unlikely, to flip a coin and have it land on heads 100 times in a row. I know that for all of the underlying possession statistics that indicate the Canucks are better than their record indicates, it’s possible that things never turn around this season.

It’s possible that the next 20 games will be exactly like this one: the Canucks outplaying, out-shooting, and out-chancing their opponent, but not out-scoring them, with the Canucks failing to capitalize on their opponent’s mistakes, and their opponents making the Canucks pay for every mistake they make. In which case, I won’t need to watch those games, because I watched this game.

Alex Burrows set a franchise record on Saturday against the Red Wings, scoring just 6 seconds into the game. It was the quickest goal in franchise history and just one second off from being tied for the fastest goal in league history. It was the lone bright spot in an otherwise frustrating game.

The Canucks may be on their way to another franchise record, one that is significantly less positive. See, Burrows’ record-setting goal, like all of the other Canucks goals over the last 11 games, was at even-strength. The team has now gone 11 games without a single powerplay goal and haven’t scored on the powerplay in their last 34 opportunities.

The Canucks and Blackhawks have had one of the most heated rivalries in the NHL over the last 4 seasons. Three consecutive meetings in the playoffs tends to have that effect. So it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense that the Canucks have their AHL farm team in Chicago. It would be like if one of the Canucks’ biggest historic rivals had their AHL farm team in the Fraser Valley.

So when the Chicago Wolves, Vancouver’s farm team, meets the Rockford IceHogs, Chicago’s farm team, there is always a little confusion. Maybe that’s why, instead of having a bench-clearing brawl, like normal people, they had a bench-unclearing brawl.

This brawl was more than a little crazy, so here are the 9 craziest things that happened:

Things may not have gone as well as the Canucks had hoped it would when they dusted off and donned the Millionaires apparel on Saturday versus the Detroit (although the game was an accurate representation of what would happen if a Vancouver team from 100 years ago played the 2013 Red Wings), but that doesn’t mean the evening wasn’t without highlights.

The uniforms looked fantastic, for one. Say what you will about khaki-coloured hockey pants — I thought they were awesome.

For another, the evening yielded the fifth Johnny Canuck video from Adam Mackay-Smith, the second half of the two-part “Legend of Johnny Canuck” series. And, as we’ve come to expect from the local filmmaker, it was absolutely fantastic. Since it debuted in the arena during the game, and by the time it hit Youtube at game’s end, you may have wanted to expunge the thought of the Canucks-as-Millionaires from your mind forever, there’s a good possibility you haven’t seen it yet. Let’s remedy that immediately:

New Van Fan is a web-series that follows the adventures of long-time Canucks fan Dan as he attempts to bring novice Canucks fan Andreas up to speed. The whole thing may or may not be an excuse to point out the inherent silliness of this fanbase — we’re not quite sure. Have an idea for an episode? Suggest it in the comments.

The Vancouver Canucks gave their fans a history lesson Saturday night, putting aside their usual blue and green attire to don the duds of their predecessors, the Vancouver Millionaires. The look was downright fantastic.

Unfortunately, the Canucks took their tribute to history a little too far. While it was nice of the club to show us what they would have looked like in Millionaires jerseys, I didn’t think the Canucks needed to show us what it would have looked like if the Millionaires had gone up against the 2013 Detroit Red Wings. It was a lesson I could have done without. While the jerseys looked excellent, the team in them looked decidedly less so when I watched this game.

The Vancouver Canucks have made the first splash in the 2013 pool of college free agents, beating out other Western Conference suitors like the Ducks, Red Wings and Coyotes to sign massive centre Kellan Lain from Lake Superior State University.

Again, that’s Kellan Lain, not to be confused with Kellan Lutz, the actor who played Emmett Cullen in the Twilight movies. Lain is a hockey player. Lutz is an actor. Remember that for now and for always.

But Lain does have some similarities with Lutz’s vampiric alter ego Emmett Cullen. No, he doesn’t sparkle in the sunlight, but he is a big, intimidating figure, at 6’6′, 222 lbs. Plus, while he’s not a vampire, he’s clearly damned in some way. What do you get when you add the 2 + 2 + 2 that make up Lain’s weight? 6, which means his personal stats are three sixes in a row. Is it just a coincidence that Lain’s height and weight are a thinly-veiled number of the beast? Perhaps. But perhaps not.

When the Canucks score 7 goals in a game, it’s tough to know which one to break down. We even had calls on Twitter to break down Henrik Sedin’s gorgeous penalty shot goal or Maxim Lapierre’s slick breakaway marker. As nice as those goals were, it’s more than a little difficult to break down a goal when it’s just one skater and a goalie. It would just be one screen shot with the breathtaking analysis of, “Well, you see, he did something the goalie didn’t expect him to do and the puck…well, it went in.”

It seemed obvious to me which one needed the full Breakdowning treatment: Mason Raymond’s seventh goal of the season, which came on a beautiful passing play that incorporated every single Canucks skater on the ice.

According to Swedish website Aftonbladet, the Vancouver Canucks have signed their 4th round draft pick from 2011, Ludwig Blomstrand, to a 3-year entry-level contract. The 20-year-old will reportedly be flying to Vancouver either today or Saturday and will likely report to the Chicago Wolves.

Like Nicklas Jensen, Blomstrand’s season in Sweden is done, as his club, Almtuna, failed to make the playoffs in the Allsvenskan. At 6’2″ and 218 lbs, Blomstrand has the size for North American hockey and the defensive ability to get in Alain Vigneault’s good books. He also has an awesome name, which immediately puts him in my good books.

You could be forgiven if you expected a meeting between the struggling Canucks and the goal-starved Predators to be a boring, defensive affair. After all, the Canucks hadn’t scored more than 2 goals since March 2nd against the Kings and the Predators were missing Colin Wilson, their leading scorer. The last meeting between these two teams ended 1-0 thanks to a lucky bounce that gave Dale “The Flying Dutchman” Weise a wide open net. The two teams are 12th and 29th in goals-per-game. Clearly, this wasn’t going to be a high-scoring game.

Oh how wrong you were, hypothetical cynic. The Canucks and Predators combined for 11 goals in an offensive slug-fest, which is fortunately not a festival for slugs as that would have left the ice a gross, slimy mess. Other than slugs, this game had it all. I watched this game.

On Wednesday night, James Duthie tweeted out a mysterious picture of Roberto Luongo and Cory Schneider posing with a dummy that appeared to have a partially or mostly severed head. If not for the other people milling about in the photo, it would have looked like Luongo and Schneider were deranged serial killers grinning madly after practicing their garrotting techniques.

Instead, it was just a preview of James Duthie’s latest comedic collaboration with Roberto Luongo, which TSN showed at the first intermission of the game between the Canucks and Predators. TSN went behind the scenes and found out that the two goaltenders’ class and professionalism is just a front, revealing just how immature their antics truly get.

Spitballin’ (or Super Pass It To Bulis: All In, if you love adventurous acronymizing) is a feature that allows us to touch on a multitude of things really fast, because in the world of hockey, there are always lots of things to find and colour. Here are a few topics that deserve mention.

The Vancouver Canucks’ powerplay is in a state of disarray. It’s been 9 games now since they scored with the man advantage.

Yes, the unit did create a goal Tuesday versus the Blue Jackets, but the goal came after the Columbus player exited the box, meaning Vancouver’s worst powerplay drought in 10 years continues.

We simply can’t allow it to. It’s time for some bold thinking to get off the schneid. It’s time for some new ideas. That in mind, we here at PITB have done some serious brainstorming and put together a list of brash, innovative suggestions that could kickstart the Canucks’ flagging man advantage. We offer them freely to Newell Brown and the rest of the Canucks’ coaching staff. Gentlemen, brace yourselves for genius:

Just how much more can Cory Schneider take?

Two years after the Canucks used their first round draft pick on Schneider in 2004, Dave Nonis traded for Roberto Luongo. Seven years later and Schneider still hasn’t surpassed Luongo on the depth chart. Nearly nine years ago, he was drafted to be the Canucks’ goaltender of the future and that future still hasn’t quite arrived yet.

It seemed all but certain that Schneider had taken over the Canucks’ net permanently when he was named the starter for game three of the 2012 playoffs against the Los Angeles Kings. Schneider was superb in all three games he played, making 97 saves on 101 shots, including 43 in the Canucks’ only win of the series. Luongo reportedly requested a trade and the speculation on his destination began.

Only, Luongo didn’t go anywhere. And now, after outplaying Schneider so far this season, Luongo looks likely to take back the number one job, or at least 1A, demoting Schneider to the dreaded 1B.

Would anyone be surprised if he just lost it? Actually, it looks like he already has.